Issue - meetings

This report seeks Council’s support for a bid for City Status for Medway once the competition is announced as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012.

Discussion:

This report sought Council’s support for a bid for City Status for Medway to be submitted once the competition was announced as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012.

The Leader, supported by Councillor Jarrett, proposed the recommendations set out in the report.

Councillor Griffiths, supported by Councillor Godwin, moved an amendment to the recommendations as follows:

“This Council:

1. Supports a bid for city status for Medway being made once the competition is announced;
   
   
2. agrees that corporate sponsorship should be sought to both demonstrate support for the bid from business and to avoid additional council expenditure in these austere times;
   
   
3. believes that the current re-branding as a city, and the comments of the Deputy Leader of the Council that “we can call ourselves what we like” are likely to undermine a successful campaign, and therefore calls on officers to explore what can be done to mitigate these ‘own goals’.

Following the debate and with the agreement of the Council, Councillor Griffiths agreed to alter the wording of his amendment to remove paragraph 3 and add the word “seek” in paragraph 2.

Decision:

The Council agreed:

(a)       to support a bid for city status for Medway being made once the competition is announced;

(b)       that corporate sponsorship should be sought to both demonstrate support for the bid from business and seek to avoid additional council expenditure in these austere times.

This report provided details of the proposed bid for City Status for Medway as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. The report referred to the loss of Rochester’s city status in 1998 and that Medway had previously bid for city status in 2000 and 2002.

The report set out Medway’s case for city status together with the benefits of city status and the associated costs of the bid. It was noted that the award of city status was entirely at the discretion of the Queen and there was no formulaic criteria for this process.

Reasons:

City status would be a fitting accolade to crown Medway’s Year of Celebrations in 2012.  There is very little downside to making a bid, and much potentially to be gained.  Once the competition is announced, a failure to bid could be interpreted as having low aspirations for Medway.